[License Revenue debate]
Steve:
<<To that effect I addressed his rationale, that if the failed negotiations were due to the more costly "additionals", then we should see the result of these "additionals" with the recent and existing contracts in the earnings statement.>>
<<But to the extent that he chooses to explain the failure as a result of the *justifiably* higher costs of these "additionals", we would then NEED to see confirmation that this was the case from those who DID license with "additionals".>>
Your "logic" will work if you make the following assumptions:
1) That the existing, signed contracts with MOT, TI, Siemens, Sumitomo are equivalent to the possible deals that failed during negotiations with the other companies, USRX in particular. There are no indication whatsoever that this is the case. I did not hear any reporting or argument or rumours that TI was trying to buy Amati's DMT DSP code outright, or that they demanded total control of the code. I think this assumption is, at the moment, simply unsupportable from the information we currently have.
2) That I was implying that a large upfront payment was part of the these deals, both the signed ones as well as the failed ones. This is simply not true, I don't remember making any such assertion. I don't remember anybody else making such assertions. Until we know otherwise, its just unfounded to imply that large upfront payments were made on the deals Amati signed, ergo that we would immediately see the result of these agreements on Amati's upcoming report. The fact of the matter is that there could be a number of ways that "payment" could be made to Amati from the signed agreements, including:
i) Upfront payments.
ii) Periodic payments that comes as a percentage of products sold by the licensee/codeveloper that uses Amati's know how.
iii) Preferential treatment given to Amati on certain products made with Amati's help. For example, MOT, TI or NEC could be giving Amati preferential treatment in terms of availability and price on the Chips they are making with Amati's help.
In short, we don't know what the true mixture of "payments" is on all these deals that Amati signed. Thus, there is simply no basis, at this time, to deduct any conclusion on the potential worth of the signed contracts to Amati based only on the next financial report Amati is coming out with.
Regards,
Edward |
